The rising costs of energy are causing serious problems. For example, the cost of generating power for use in homes and businesses has soared because many power plants rely on crude oil to generate power. As most people know, crude oil is expensive and the cost continues to rise. There is little likelihood of relief from such high prices thanks to a weak currency and a strong global demand for crude oil. Additionally, there are many environmental concerns that are inherently involved with the use of crude oil. These include, but are not limited to, pollution and spills.
One solution is to employ alternative fuels, such as ethanol, to power the generation plants. Ethanol burns cleaner, and thus, does not generate the same types of pollution concerns that crude oil does. Ethanol-based power generation plants, however, can still be costly. One way to reduce the costs is to re-capture some of the by-products of producing that energy and use it to provide resources for the power generation plant.